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Two years ago, she decided to set up Rare Birds Book Club from her base in Leith, scraping together enough funds to build the website, and so she began distributing books through the club's online subscription service.

Speaking of the book club, she said: "I had the idea for it, I had experience in reading and storytelling but none in retailing or publishing."

This has not stopped Rare Birds Book Clubs going global - but Rachel jokes that it wasn't always this way, saying: "The first month I had fourteen members and I was related to at least half of them.

"When we got the first stranger, it was a very exciting day."

But soon this Leith-based book club began to grow, capturing the attention of weekly magazine Stylist and other media outlets, giving it the platform it needed to become what it is today.

Rachel said:"Our audience just exploded in terms of regional reach, we suddenly had audiences in London, now we have readers in 23 countries, even as far as Japan and New Zeland."

How it works?

Rare Birds Book Club cherry-picks the best books and deliver them straight to your door each month

The online book club works through a subscription service that you can sign up to for a monthly cost of £10.

Its members are sent a new work of fiction each month that has been cherry-picked, and champions female authors.

Rachel's service is all about convenience; your chosen book will arrive at your door beautifully wrapped with a postcard providing a shorty synopsis of the book and why it's been picked.

Just like any other book club, everyone meets to discuss the book at the end of the month - but rather than in a local coffee shop, it's all done online.

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